This volume explores the relation between identity and diversity as the essential condition of interculturalism, and the sometimes positive, sometimes negative, role that identity and diversity play within intercultural dialogue in an increasingly globalised world. An international conference, in Madrid, October 2003, brought together scholars from four continents and allowed them to share their knowledge and learn about the issues of -identity and diversity: philological and philosophical reflections-. The present volume contains a selection of the conference papers. The contributors explore...

The concept of the user is not a well-established sociological concept even though the user is omnipresent in our culture as someone who uses a device, a machine, the internet or a public service. Due to the close relationship between man and technology user studies have become very important. The papers assembled in this volume were presented at the Vth International Conference on -The Culture of the Artificial- The User of the Artificial (Ascona Switzerland, Monte Verita, 23-25 April 2004). They deal with various aspects of the figure of the user."

This book focuses on the novel Paradiso of Cuban author Jose Lezama Lima (1910-1976), and in particular on the protagonist Jose Cemi. It examines the development of Cemi according to the three distinct phases detailed by Lezama: the placentario world of family protection, the awakening to the exterior world and the subsequent friendships made, and the eventual encounters with Oppiano Licario. Cemi s progression, and his growing ability to interpret and create texts, is analysed as analogous to the reader s progression through the novel. In this respect, both the reader and Cemi are...

Age is a complex cross-cutting notion for at least two reasons: the intricate interweaving of its biological and socio-cultural meanings and its dual significance as both a benchmark in an individual s life course and a foundation for social structure.
This book offers new perspectives on age and ageing by combining achievements in the biological sciences and their different applications and interpretations in demography, anthropology, psychology and other pertinent disciplines. Thirty contributors from these various fields revisit the measures and the biological models of ageing, the...

This book shows why Keats and Romanticism appeal to the Japanese mind, and how English Romantic poetry has found its way into Japanese literature. The first part analyses the reception of Romanticism in Japan before and after World War II and then focuses on the Japanese reception of Keats and the translation of Keats poetry. The second part of the book deals with the medical aspect in Keats poetry, his treatment of the supernatural, and his distinctive use of words."

This book sheds new light on James Hogg, the Scottish poet (1770-1835), going beyond the Ettrick Shepherd stereotype. By focussing on Hogg s poetry (Scottish Pastorals, The Queen s Wake, Jacobite Relics, Queen Hynde, Pilgrims of the Sun) it shows that his work, and the critical response to it, was significantly shaped by the concept of the autodidact: a working-class writer who was considered to be a poet of Nature s Making .
The image of the autodidact is pursued from its beginnings Ramsay s Gentle Shepherd, Macpherson s Ossian, Burns...

This volume includes a selection of fifteen papers delivered at the Second International Conference on Late Modern English. The chapters focus on significant linguistic aspects of the Late Modern English period, not only on grammatical issues such as the development of pragmatic markers, for-to infinitive constructions, verbal subcategorisation, progressive aspect, sentential complements, double comparative forms or auxiliary/negator cliticisation but also on pronunciation, dialectal variation and other practical aspects such as corpus compilation, which are approached from different...

This book is about the self in contemporary Japan. In contrast to Euro-American cultures, in which the self is considered to be the essence of personhood, in Japanese culture the self is constantly reconstructed in relation to others. This particular self is studied by examining the ways popular culture is consumed, with a special focus on manga, the Japanese word for comics and cartoons.
The first part of the book contains an ethnographic research in which the author investigates the relationship between popular media and the search for self-knowledge. In the second part a historical...

Madame de Souza s seven major novels written in the period from 1794 to 1822 show the emergence of the female-authored French novel, and the novel s role as a vehicle for political ideas during the revolutionary period. The novels; Adele de Senange, Emilie et Alphonse, Charles et Marie, Eugenie et Mathilde, Eugene de Rothelin, Mademoiselle de Tournon, and La comtesse de Fargy, make an important contribution to early nineteenth-century French literature. Madame de Souza was an acute observer of the intimate workings of Paris society, and of social and political change in the...